WILL SEEING MACHINES HAVE ILLUSIONS? R. L. GREGORY

The ability of the higher animals to accept and interpret information from distant objects confers enormous advantages for creatures (or machines) which respond only to immediate stimulation and have no opportunity to anticipate the future. Distance receptors, especially the eyes, serve as early warning systems by giving information of distance events, making it possible to gauge the probable future. The classical biological notion of stimulusresponse applies to creatures limited to touch information. The development of distance-receptors evidently allowed brains to develop to give strategic behaviour. It is unfortunate that the early, now classical, studies of reflexes involving touch and the internal regulation of the body have been so largely taken over to describe brain function, for these concepts are inadequate for describing the central nervous system. They tell nothing about how brains handle information from the eyes, to allow animals and man to see. They tell us nothing about decision-making: how present experience is related to the stored past to predict the immediate future.